The Calendar Hung Itself
by coldwhite
Summary: Eli's never had an ideal life-he's been through more than most, but he's managed to grab a hold of the slightest bit of happiness at nearly eighteen years of age. When his therapist pitches a strange proposal to him, it forces him to confront his past, and with it, enters Julia. He soon finds that acknowledging the past doesn't get easier with time.


I have no idea how to introduce things properly, so I'll just say that this is the product of missing Eli's Eli-ness circa S10, complaining about how Julia seemed to mysteriously disappear into thin air in exchange for 'canon happiness,' and how we never received any real back story on their relationship. Thus, with the help of a lovely person named Gehad, whatever this turns out to be was born. This will be written in three basic parts: excerpts from Eli's journal, updates on his current reality in Toronto, and past events with Julia. I'm not sure if it's obvious or not, but this is almost 100% AU, so proceed with caution. **Rated M to be safe in the future?** Ha. Enjoy!

* * *

Today, you asked me to tell you about her. Laughter most definitely ensued, and I hadn't been that ridiculously amused since I first learned that it's better to laugh accordingly than question what's being said, but, as per usual, I was forced to question through the joyous experience of having a thought process explained to me (one of which that was all too brief and lacking in that theatrical grandeur I've come to expect from you, I regretfully admit), in that open-ended format that scatterbrained teenagers just adore. If only you were rousing those around me as well. You'd be a hit with the underage and underestimated masses, really.

You told me to write about her, and that was the extent of a misinformed, insignificant blip in time. Seconds passed, and I didn't think anything of it. Why, you ask—that meager spark of curiosity within the underpaid and uncaring therapist you are seemingly piqued.

Because I don't have anything left to say to you.

Have I ever mentioned how much I _detest_ writing in first person? It reinforces the belief that beneath layer after layer of characteristical grime is this unified, nearly palpable, base of all humanity. This only ever spoken of foundation that builds every one of us to be whoever we choose to be that particular moment in time, consisting of these fundamental beliefs, values, morals, etc. If we all dreamt the same nightmares, the events that have long transpired and you can't misplace, even temporarily, plaguing masses night after night, maybe I'd actually buy into that, but we don't. One size doesn't fit all, and referring back to this 'I' entity line after line is completely and utterly pointless—to the point where it almost becomes blatantly so. You're never going to fit between the syllables that don't belong to you, and you're never going to be able to understand the way that I felt about her.

No beating bundle of flesh, muddled fists residing between dizzying crosses of filament and running veins, is ever going to soak up the entirety (albeit a rather shallow entirety, but I digress) of _I_—not in the sense that I'm some remarkable stretch of flesh, because I'm not, but in the sense that she's anything but. No person, bearing even the _slightest_ bit of knowledge of who she was will ever be able to brush the underside of her hand with an autonomous ease that even _I_ could never explain, and still stand the bitter aura emanating out from her and the wincing retraction of her entire figure beside yours. You wouldn't be able to stand the way that she looked at you then, wearing that mask composed of an undeclared distaste for you and dripping with those hopes of finding what had drawn her to you in the first place—because according to her, she never knew. She had just _hoped_—hoped to understand, hoped to cherish, hoped to love. But the fact was that she never knew _why_, and you had to cope with the remnants of her fractured deductions, day after day, glance after glance. And you loved her even more for it.

Nobody else has ever understood or even remotely 'got' it, nor will anybody else ever understand it._ I_ involves dragging hours of back story that everyone involved refuses to mutter, and the remnants of a legacy that trickles into everything that you do, like a bittersweet reminder of things undone, words that had yet to be uttered even after the moment has expired, nothing more than a blip in time ringing in incomprehensible hues.

No offense, but I highly doubt that you're doing anything more than skimming and crafting up the delicate entity that'll be your speech to me our next appointment—something about how, even in my writing, I won't open myself up to other people. But tell me, what's the point in stripping yourself down to the nothingness that had convinced you to begin in the first place, hungry for some attainable caricature of the concept of 'completion,' if no other human will ever bear the same curves as you? Concave planes that line other meaningless tissues, or the hopes and dreams that some corporation branded you with from birth? These promises of a fruitful future? Mention of a paycheck aside, you could care less. You have your own struggles and emotional trauma to cope with, I'm sure, and you won't let a random with an impending psychotic disorder and a seemingly messy past get in the way of that—you're only human. I don't blame you for half assing your job, or putting as little effort into every check you mark beside my name as possible, all in the name of beloved psychosis. And no offense, but take offense. Be very offended, because this is what our humanity has been reduced to—inverted archetypes for those whom lack a deeper meaning to their being, and illuminated, star-studded, crystal-coated dreams of getting by. How magical.

And I don't want to underestimate any of it by putting it into simple terms, or put some stereotypical high school romance that never even had a chance upon a throne that it doesn't deserve. And I don't want to say that I miss her, but I do. So I come to the conclusion that when at a precipice, it's better to keep your thoughts behind bound veils within the cornerstone of your sanity.

Besides, I didn't want to talk about it anyway.

* * *

The calendar flared noiselessly in the far corner of the room, the rustling of countless regrets marked in blood red, circled in a staggering shade of ivory, outspoken by the muted pulsations of seconds, then minutes upon a glass charter, and the silence swirling about the confines of four walls. Altogether, the nothingness of a dragging hour and a half appointment was a blaring siren against the cushioned underside of his skull.

Any impending curl to Elijah's lips, chapped and flesh all but bitten off, seemed like such a far cry from his current demeanor, all traces of his signature smug fashion a distant blur upon strokes of grey. The rounded pads of his posed fingers rounded the vast span of a lone temple, while his opposing arm was tensed at his side, appendages rolling against coarse fabric and velvet desire, keeping him from a winding knee. He kept himself steady while the beating against concave planes grew more unbearable by the second, all the while pondering whether or not he would become honestly will, or if his subconscious mind opted for such a display in the eyes of a cherished audience member.

She remained straight-faced some ways away from him, across the floor.

Narrowed scopes had yet to slow, still rolling, and Elijah couldn't sway a wandering eye, swiftly taking note of common regrets, the eagerness for a timer to run short and dismiss both of them from a punishment that the two dreaded succumbing to every Wednesday afternoon.

His thoughts have gradually turned to glorious reds and blues, capsules that bear a promise of solitude amidst the blistering chaos, when her slender fingers, crawling through years of age upon a journey to the root, finally trickle past the remainder of blank pages that still remain within the journal's bounds. Glittering diamonds taunting the content of a broken boy beneath its clutch, as if the printed words weren't difficult enough to stand as is, and she seems to search for the correct phrase to displace what would have been his proud demeanor, had he not slipped away into this haze of a migraine, and takes a good stretch of time doing so before speaking.

Any other attainable thought process is inaudibly ushered from a collaborative, though teetering, balance, and she clears her throat, still humming the sorrowful tune of a year past.

"While I greatly appreciate your analysis on my psyche," she begins, and though he's under the influence of a greater hand at that moment, he quickly perks up and raises his set glare to observe any change in her facial features as she voices her thoughts aloud, but her stature and tone is set in a better stone than his ever was. The leather journal that Elijah had neglected ever since his mother had picked it up for him 'just because,' as she had so aptly put it, was carefully perched on her knees, and the undersides of her middle-aged and freshly divorced hands still cradle the perimeter of the entity, as if the thought of her was something to savor.

He grimaces, turning away from the sound of her voice, but it remains a constant, plucking at the shedding shell of his skull.

Unmoved by his distaste for the events unfolding, syllables slipping, she continues in a matter of factly tone, "this isn't Julia."

At first, the mere utter of her didn't seem to faze him—as per usual, he can scarcely feel marrow turning cold, the lining of his being pulling inward towards his core, tensing all around him, but Elijah's hands are still comforting near his head, and he's still dancing about a patriot's dream.

But as a new-found silences wades in, rushing past the outer bounds of his physical being, the stillness seems to disrupt his trance and discard the notion altogether. He's not fantasizing about blues or greys, but all in red. The dark that so constantly surrounded her, whether it was her name or something more tangible than that.

He chuckles, almost darkly, and it's almost as if he had never left in the first place.

Withdrawing secondary flesh from his temples, he reconfigures his stature upon the edge of his seat, clasping his hands together upon a folded knee accordingly. Still holding onto the amused breath, he shakes his head, "You seem so sure of yourself—"

But before he could lace his commentary with a critical tinge or two, she sews his amusement shut.

"Oh, I am."

Eli merely raises a skeptical brow at how absolute her opinion on what she so clearly knew nothing about, or so he presumed, but holds his tongue, allowing her to continue, and when she doesn't, a sparrow furrows in between the flesh.

The dark haired woman, a meek thing that made up for a willowy build in a stern, all knowing composure that Elijah was less than fond of due to his own stubbornness and sense of superiority in regards to those around him, only shifted in her place across the floor to set the bound book aside, opting for what he assumed to be notes on the words he had so distinctly penned in his own hand, neatly tucked beneath the grip of a clipboard. She cradles one leg over the other, delicately folding it over stone, and eyes him strangely, in a way that he's not sure how to react to—whether she's willing his commentary onward or not, Eli simply clamps down on a loose thought process and waits for her to push the hour left forward.

"Everything here," she gestures towards the entity all of its own perched upon the up most portion of the coffee table separating the parties from one another, "only serves to reinforce the belief that the people supporting you aren't capable of understanding you, or Julia."

Eli mulls over the thought for a moment, and then slowly nods his head, yes, as if it was the most obvious point that one could make. "Exactly," he reiterates briefly, shrugging slightly as if to disregard the critical weight of the syllables that even he could sense.

She holds his gaze for a few moments longer, no facial feature ever faltering beneath the grip of fluorescent lighting (which was most likely a dominant factor in his still lingering migraine, he soberly deducted), before taking his conformation into subtle consideration.

"My professional opinion, which I doubt you even take for credible," she remarks, referring to the venomous attack on her own status, "but nonetheless, is that you hold this relationship you had with her higher than you should."

Eli instantly stops her verbally, in a mess of poorly-executed and hanging syllables, furrowing his eyebrows in confusion even more so than he had in previous moments. Winding knees falter, and he's leaning forward towards his therapist, as if being nearer to the source would clarify what exactly it is that she was stating—which was that his relationship with Julia, something that most didn't know of, and even less knew more than a brief account of its entirety, was less than what the two of them had built it up to be. And this was the first time something had been altered, a memory tainted.

He frantically attempted to retain the brighter hues, but it was a stroke that you couldn't disregard, weren't able to look past. Red and uglier than anything he had ever seen, it was there.

"I'm holding it exactly where I should be, actually," he revised the thought, but she quickly shook it away.

"Eli, I understand that you're a stubborn person"—this is where he would roll his eyes in griped amusement, slight tints of disbelief edging on a sigh as he sits back against the bunched fabric of his chair—"but you've never hesitated to tell me about Clare, or anyone else that you've been romantically involved with."

"Yeah, well, Clare isn't dead."

And the words came with as much malice as one could fathom, and it even takes him aback.

Sure, Clare and him had led a promising bond—they were more than each other's rocks when tides turned and the aroma of a sea without a canvas for a sky to paint upon became too difficult to bear; they shared more common interests than not, and they'd escape the grips of trial after trial, stroke after stroke upon splitting endeavors, with ease. But his own trials had gradually grown to become the determining factor in their relationship, although it had gone unbeknownst to both until they had reached their breaking point, and ties were better severed than frayed and hopeful. Eli didn't blame her—she was doing what was best for her, and there was no reason for him to pin any kind of venomous attributes to her, much less undervalue their relationship than what it was truly worth in between hitching breaths, but there was an offense somewhere in the fact, that there was even a comparison to begin with. He had yet to hold the two in the same regard, and he didn't plan on doing so very soon, but again, he was thrust into the orbit of a proposal he had yet to muster, didn't want to acknowledge.

Licking his lips, as if it would seal his wandering mind from the fact of what had been said, he recomposes himself, and in a much more fair tone, he utters, "I don't like thinking about it, about her. I don't like remembering."

It's a voice that he rarely uses—one that practically screams vulnerability, and he detests it, but this sense of superiority in regards to others that he had so carefully built up for himself wasn't a palpable, nor logical, facade to cower behind. Whether he was speaking to a complete stranger or his father, it didn't matter, and he was realizing this as he carried an aching mind forward, into oblivion. He's weak, he's weak, he's weak—but at least he's honest.

"We didn't have a relationship at all," he laughs slightly, though there's no reason to be amused. He thinks, it sounds silly. It's a childish claim, and he's making something out of nothing—a monumental nothing, perhaps, but still consisting of undeclared war, open space.

He shrinks forward to tower over his knees, empty hands supporting his upper body once more, and he's grinning. A modest strip of flesh between indecipherable indentations, turns in demeanor, but it says more than he ever could.

"I was in love with her, and she liked the attention. That's all there ever was to it," he sighs, almost regretfully so, but his therapist wouldn't have been able to tell either way, due to the cage in which he voluntarily lingered between the metal it had been shaped from. Marrow still rejoicing within its own particular brand of winter, he's remembering, and it's a foreign feeling for him. He's not sure if he should rejoice at the remembrance of easier days, or cringe at the dark that coated every instance he could recall, a plague upon his mind.

At a loss for what else there was to admit, Eli glances up to meet his therapist's gaze, and from what he can deduct, it's been fixated on none other than the crumbling demeanor that he had taken to in moment's past. Contrary to his belief, in that hour and a half, he had her full attention, and with an apparent effort on his part, she seemed to be even more willing to prod, provoke, everything her job description entailed.

"Well, I'm sure there was more to it than a lack of mutual affection," she adds, but Elijah merely shakes his head in response, a loose rotation that ensures the sincerity to be met with an equal sense of voluntary cooperation.

"There wasn't."

It's a flat, nearly heartbreaking confession that's a far cry from what he had insisted the week prior, in the written word, and it couldn't be any closer to the truth. He had been nothing but a convenience to an equally lonely person, but he couldn't contribute to the role of victim—at one point in time, he may have enjoyed the using. He might have used her, too, simply for the sake of disrupting whatever streak she had over his head, but his feelings for her were always real.

And she was incapable of understanding it.


End file.
